This is not a new story in America: A young veteran back from war whose struggle to rejoin society has failed, at least for the moment, fighting demons and left homeless.

But it is happening to a new generation. As the war in Afghanistan plods on in its seventh year, and the war in Iraq in its fifth, a new cadre of homeless veterans is taking shape.

And with it come the questions: How is it that a nation that became so familiar with the archetypal homeless, combat-addled Vietnam veteran is now watching as more homeless veterans turn up from new wars?

What lessons have we not learned? Who is failing these people? Or is homelessness an unavoidable byproduct of war, of young men and women who devote themselves to serving their country and then see things no man or woman should?

(Incidentally, Erin McCalm, the author of this “report,” repeats this myth again later in the article.) Pardon me while I take a short trip to the vomitorium to purge myself of that kind of trite psychobabble.

I’m not someone who deals comfortably with numbers, so I’ll leave it to you guys to tell me what’s wrong with these:

For now, about 1,500 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan have been identified by the Department of Veterans Affairs. About 400 of them have taken part in VA programs designed to target homelessness.

The 1,500 are a small, young segment of an estimated 336,000 veterans in the United States who were homeless at some point in 2006, the most recent year for which statistics are available, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

And yes, I am willing to bet that this minuscule statistical sampling is somehow very wrong. That is, I’m assuming that if someone compares Vet homeless figures to general homeless figures for young men and women in the same demographic, the numbers will be the same or, as seems often to be the case (whether the subject is alleged rises in Vet suicide or murder) lower.

Anyway, Ms. McClam, isn’t really interested in actual numbers. She’s much more interested in predicting imminent social breakdown because of the return of vast numbers of dysfunctional vets:

Still, advocates for homeless veterans use words like “surge” and “onslaught” and even “tsunami” to describe what could happen in the coming years, as both wars continue and thousands of veterans struggle with post-traumatic stress.

People who have studied postwar trauma say there is always a lengthy gap between coming home — the time of parades and backslaps and “The Boys Are Back in Town” on the local FM station — and the moments of utter darkness that leave some of them homeless.

In that time, usually a period of years, some veterans focus on the horrors they saw on the battlefield, or the friends they lost, or why on earth they themselves deserved to come home at all. They self-medicate, develop addictions, spiral down.

How — or perhaps the better question is why — is this happening again?

“I really wish I could answer that question,” says Anthony Belcher, an outreach supervisor at New Directions, which conducts monthly sweeps of Skid Row in Los Angeles, identifying homeless veterans and trying to help them get over addictions.

“It’s the same question I’ve been asking myself and everyone around me. I’m like, wait, wait, hold it, we did this before. I don’t know how our society can allow this to happen again.”

I suspect that poor Mr. Belcher can’t answer the question because it’s probably not happening again, just as it didn’t happen before.

And so the article goes. Broad, unsupported conclusions, breathless anguished questions, a complete absence of hard facts. This is not reporting. This doesn’t even rise to yellow journalism. This is so bad Ms. McClam couldn’t even make it as the writer of daytime soaps — the audience would expect more in the way of plot development and verisimilitude. This is the stuff of 1930s Hollywood spoofs about bad female journalists, trafficking in breathy innuendo, emotions and fantasy.

If my math is right (and there no guarantee it is, jarhead remember) those numbers work out to be .004% of the veteran homeless were from the Iraq/Afghanistan war.

So .004% is worthy of a 1,947 word article from the AP? This article from the NYT’s in November puts the number of Iraq/Afghanistan homeless veterans at 400. In two months it went up 1,100. That’s some jump.

And how about that 336,000 number. HUD reports that in 2006 the number of homeless in the United States was

The number of chronically homeless people dropped from 175,900 in 2005 to 155,600 in 2006, according to data collected from about 3,900 cities and counties.

Anyone see a problem there? This article from HUD puts it at 744,000. Pretty big discrepancy there. It even says 41% of that number are whole families which means only 416,000 are singles. I’m thinking that most of these veteran homeless are not taking their whole family with them so the majority of single homeless are veterans?

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OK everybody, let’s wake up! The extraordinarily small number of “new” combat veterans with problems shown in the NY Times article does not, in my mind, go to the credibility of the author. As tragic as are the crimes, violent events, suicides, and the like, these things and more occur in the rest of their age group population who have no military connection whatever. Every soldier (newspeak: Warfighter) is just a person, a human being, with usual and customary mental baggage like everyone else who is disciplined and trained to perform some extraordinary things in extraordinary ways with extraordinary equipment, in combat. Military combat is an unavoidably a life changing event, and sometimes the most profound event that one could experience. People sometimes forget that Military training includes things like discipline, teamwork, doing the correct things under extreme pressure, thinking under extreme pressure, the priority of the mission, and so forth. I would like to see the behavior record of all “new” combat veterans. They are probably better behaved than the rest of the public. I also feel that the author should learn more about PTSD before using it as a battering ram and starting another wave of hysterical stereotyping to the detriment of those who have real diagnosed PTSD and combat veterans who are fortunate to not have the disorder at all. I have real diagnosed PTSD. It is just plain horrible. I wish it on no one. I have had it since my Vietnam experience, and I would like, for just a little while, to have people stop looking at me cross-eyed in stereotypical amazement wondering if I am going to “go postal”, and pushing my hyper-vigilance buttons for their vicious fun and personal political profit in the workplace. With articles like this, and the others now on the bandwagon, it seems my desire to get on with life without the adverse public perception trappings of PTSD all very, very hopeless.

What’s marvelous (in a twisted way) about the AP report, is how it relies on the media’s original myth about insane, drug addicted homeless Vietnam Vets to support its central tenet.

Very similar to getting war to pay for war, Book.

How is it that a nation that became so familiar with the archetypal homeless, combat-addled Vietnam veteran is now watching as more homeless veterans turn up from new wars?

Obviously because journalists are still feckless propagandists.

greg

…proving yet again that there is no low that the conservative won’t greedily embrace. Congratulations, Bookworm, on as divisively partisan a post as you’ve ever authored. Clearly, someone’s paying you to publish this offensive crap. Enjoy the money.

g thinks he is for unified partisan gain? He conducts divisive insurgency operations every time he vomits up his hate here.

Some people are very good at doublethink. g is so consistent, he has divided up his mind into separate compartments to color match his divided loyalties and partisanship.

Al

Greg.,
Your opinion is yours, and no one in this nation, at this time, will prevent you from expressing it. Your opinion also states that your life is described by the space between the semicircles,
( )
Al

You get any more hostile, greg, and I’ll have to ban you — reluctantly, I admit, because I’ve always been amused by your attacks. The sheer vituperativeness, though, which involves entirely substance free insults, has got to stop.

Allen

I enjoyed the opening of the article, about rejoining society after combat. I don’t really recall leaving society. Did I get thrown out, and no one told me?

Oh, I guess leaving society is enlisting in the U.S, Army.

I’m kind of confused on this one. Will all of you let me back into your society? I’ve been back in your country for some time, and I’ve never killed anyone since I’ve been back.

Ship him some drugs, Book, I think he is getting low on his psycho depressors.

Don’t want to be around some people when they are off their meds.

Will all of you let me back into your society? I’ve been back in your country for some time, and I’ve never killed anyone since I’ve been back.

Just like people who have been to strange countries and planets, you have to stay in quarantine to ensure that you don’t bring back something, Allen. We don’t want any of that Marine or Army or infantry “gung ho” crap infiltrating our universities and schools, ya know.